2009 DEFSA Conference

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Theme: "Opening gates, between and beyond design disciplines"

The 12th National DEFSA conference was hosted by the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa (DEFSA) and co-hosted by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU).

The event was held in collaboration with the 2009 International Mohair Summit. DEFSA encouraged speakers to investigate and debate the manner in which boundaries between design industry, government, community and design disciplines could be addressed within the conference theme:

Opening gates to new terrains

Explore and investigate new terrains as presented through new and revised Higher Education legislation, policy and qualification framework. Present innovative opportunities and challenges for design education.

Opening gates between design disciplines

Opening gates beyond design disciplines

Interactions, collaboration, exchange with the community, industry and other disciplines such as business, science, agriculture etc. Contributions that design education interventions make towards social and economic development.

Opening gates to environmental awareness

Contributions that design education interventions make towards the environment and a sustainable future. An important focus of this theme is to celebrate 2009 United Nations Year of Natural Fibre.

Conference Downloads:

Li Edelkoort

Lidewij Edelkoort, often called Li, (born 1950, Wageningen) is a Dutch trend forecaster, someone who anticipates future fashion and design trends.

Edelkoort began her career as a fashion coordinator at the Amsterdam department store De Bijenkorf. After finishing her degree at ArtEZ, in 1975 she relocated to France, where she set up as an independent trend consultancy. She soon created the consultancy 'Trend Union', a trend forecasting service based in Paris. Trend Union provides bi-annual trend forecasting books for the fashion and design community with colour and lifestyle information. She then founded Studio Edelkoort, a consultancy bureau, and opened two offices in New York City (Edelkoort Inc) and Tokyo (Edelkoort East).

She has helped to shape products for international brands, advising on product identity and development strategy, and her clients have included Coca-Cola, Nissan, Camper, Siemens, Moooi, and Douwe Egberts. In the beauty industry, Studio Edelkoort's has developed concepts and beauty products for Estée Lauder, Lancôme, L'Oréal, Shiseido, Dim, and Gucci.

She is the art director and co-publisher of the magazine View on Colour. This looks at trends in colour taste with a view to their influence on fashion, graphics, industrial design, packaging, cosmetics and many other areas. She is also publisher of Interior View magazine. She is involved in the non-profit humanitarian organization Heartwear which helps third world producers market their goods in the west through a mail order catalogue. The profits return to the producers' communities.

In 1999 she was elected Chairwoman of the Design Academy, Eindhoven, Netherlands, where she served until 2008. In 2011, Edelkoort launched the website and social media platform called TrendTablet. The British design magazine i-D listed her among the world's 40 most important designers and Time magazine named her one of the 25 most influential fashion experts of our day.

On February, 22 2008, on behalf of the French Minister of Culture Didier Grumbach, President of the French Fédération de la Couture, Edelkoort was invested with the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of her artistic and literary creative contribution to France and international culture. Edelkoort also received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Art from the United Kingdom's Nottingham Trent University, at the university's awards ceremony on July 15, 2008.

Academic Review

Full papers are submitted for peer review after successful acceptance of a conference abstract. All full papers submitted to the DEFSA conference committee are subjected to a rigorous double blind peer review process. This process takes place prior to both the verbal presentation at the conference and the publication of the proceedings. Expert specialists within the field of Art, Design and Architecture are selected to perform the reviews (Reviewers list is included). Authors receive feedback in the form of a peer review report. A confidentiality clause ensures that both authors and reviewers remain anonymous during the peer review process.

Peer Reviewers

Johan van Niekerk: Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Mugendi M'Rithaa: Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Bart Verveckken: Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Piers Carey: Durban University of Technology

Prof Nic Allan: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Mary Duker: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Inge Economou: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Theresa Hardman: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

David Jones: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Prof Danie Jordaan: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Dr Heidi Saayman-Hattingh: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Mike Swanepoel: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Prof Allan John Munro: Tshwane University of Technology

Dr Pieter Smit: Tshwane University of Technology

Amanda Breytenbach: University of Johannesburg

Andro Nizetich: University of Johannesburg

Deirdre Pretorius: University of Johannesburg

Landi Raubenheimer: University of Johannesburg

Prof Marian Sauthoff: University of Johannesburg

Desiree Smal: University of Johannesburg

Karen von Veh: University of Johannesburg

Ria van Zyl: University of Pretoria

Pieter Swanepoel: University of Pretoria

Adrienne Viljoen: SABS Design Institute

Papers

An Evaluation Of Interpreted Technical and Aesthetical Design Suitability in Garments

Keywords:

Discipline:

Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

Silk is a prestigious material, often used to produce textiles and clothing associated with rank, luxury, wealth and social status. In Africa silk is produced and used less extensively than cotton and wool – both geographically and socially. However, silk textile traditions in Africa have been sustained by the continuing demand for prestigious culturally significant clothes.

Kalahari tussah silk comes from a silk worm from the Kalahari, a vast region of red sandy soil extending across much of Southern Africa. The wild silk is a naturally occurring renewable resource used by the San, who are the original and oldest inhabitants of South- Africa. Small communities are located in a few areas like the Kalahari Desert region, and regions of Namibia (Lewis- Williams, 1991:6-11).

Keywords:

Discipline:

Media & Communications Design

The creative and cultural industries form a significant employment sector in both the Thames Gateway region in England and the Durban Metropolitan Area in South Africa. Whilst successful completion of a degree has increased the chances of employment and career options for learners in both countries, employability may also be increased through work experience.

Design Thinking – Crossing Disciplinary Borders

Keywords:

Discipline:

Design Education Research

Design thinking, a well known topic of discussion in the design discourse, offers exciting innovative possibilities when applied in other disciplines. This paper explores the potential of design thinking in the seemingly disparate discipline of Operations Research/Management Science (OR/MS). OR/MS develops mathematical models for analysis based on quantitative logic as an answer to management or other real life problems. Design shares this concern with trying to improve current situations but approaches these problems differently, using ‘designerly ways of thinking’.

Extending The Learning Landscape: Adapting To A New Student

Keywords:

Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

According to Megan Hughes (2006) the generation that educators of the 21st Century have to deal with is referred to as “Generation Y”. They represent the by-product of the previous generation, i.e. the “baby boomers”, who heralded a “surge of new inventions and improvements” (Hughes, 2006), allowing the next generation benefits of improved technology and a much easier life.

“The Y Generation doesn't like hard work, even when it's for its own benefit, and is very much in love with anything that's 'instant'. “(Hughes.2006)

Design educators often adopt teaching and learning methods of a traditional nature. These practices may no longer be effective in the fast-paced world of tomorrow.

Interdisciplinary Theory Teaching: Can One Size Really Fit All?

Keywords:

Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

The Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Johannesburg has diverse departments ranging from Architecture, Fine Arts and Multimedia to five different design disciplines. After years of being housed in geographically dispersed locations the faculty has recently moved into one building, and is in the process of consolidating and rationalizing the teaching programmes. One area of rationalization has been identified as the theory programme, and we have been assigned the task of identifying theoretical material and drawing up a single teaching programme that most departments could subscribe to.

Making Space For Identity, Diversity And Voice In A Transcultural Visual Arts Community Of Practice

Keywords:

Discipline:

Graphic Design & Visual Art

There is national and institutional pressure to transform education, to revisit curriculums and approaches to teaching and learning and to address issues around dominant worldviews, inclusiveness and diversity. Visual arts lecturer practitioners, like other academics, are being challenged to respond.

We know that the students entering our programmes, in all their growing diversity, provide new challenges, bringing with them as they do different and often complex social, cultural and familial identities, some of which they leave, wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly, at the door, as they look to conform to the expectations of the disciplinary communities.

Mapping A Relevant Education And Training Framework For The Jewellery Sector

Keywords:

Discipline:

Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

This paper acknowledges the ongoing process being used in the Jewellery sector to develop an integrated training and development framework. The framework progresses from ABET Level 1 to doctoral qualifications and shows how the various qualifications could link directly to specific occupations within a sector. In doing so, this paper addresses the boundaries between education, training, industry and government. More importantly, it indicates the inclusive process followed to open the gates to enter the new terrain of relevant education and training for sector specific occupations.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the South African jewellery sector is aligning education and training within the government’s educational policy.

Mirror-Mirror-On The Wall

Keywords:

Discipline:

Design Education Research

A Structured Reflection Framework To Implement Visual Research As Practise-Based Arts
Research Design Illustrated Within An Applied Photographic Educational Context

Although various South African universities engage with art practice research methodologies, the research designs employed have not been clearly articulated or interrogated as of yet, leaving some work to be done towards answering Loxley and Prosser’s (2005) call for a refinement of arts-based research methods.

Negating the Serif: Postcolonial Approaches toTypeface Design

Keywords:

Discipline:

Graphic Design & Visual Art

The practice and the teaching of Typography in South Africa has yet to undergo radical or substantive changes in light of the multiple shifts and developments in critical thinking that has taken place in Academia and contemporary visual practice in recent years. While contemporaneous thinking has “ forced a change “ in many disciplines in light of the Postmodern, Post Colonial and other “Post” posturing that challenge the dominance of Europe and the West as the centre, very little of the core imperatives of these schools of thought has found its way into the development and thinking around Typography in South Africa save a few seminal books and teachers.

Nurturing The Personal And The Intuitive In The Design Studio

Keywords:

Discipline:

Graphic Design & Visual Art

The design process, like all creative activities, involves both rational aspects and other less easily-explicable non-rational aspects, such as the roles of intuition, imagination and personal insight. There are therefore different ways of knowing and learning involved in teaching design.

Opening Gates: Reflecting on the liaison role of DEFSA at a tertiary level

Keywords:

Discipline:

Design Education Research

The paper reflects on how DEFSA has delivered on the Forum’s first aim, with specific focus on the liaison activities that takes place at a tertiary level. This aim, as documented in the DEFSA Constitution, reads “Ensuring that liaison is maintained between relevant primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education in matters pertaining to design education, between technikons, universities, technical colleges, private institutions, education authorities and the design industry” (DEFSA, 2007a).

Pitches and Proposals: Linking Reseach and Commercial Strategies

Keywords:

Discipline:

Design Education Research

One of the central obligations of a post-graduate programme at a university is research. Any research project starts with a research proposal. Therefore one of the central tasks in the training of researchers is mastering the strategies of persuading the overseers of research that the task that the researcher is undertaking is feasible, do-able and worthwhile. To do this act of persuasion the researcher has also to demonstrate that he or she is in all likelihood capable of doing research – this demonstration of competency is built into the proposal. The result of research will be a document like a dissertation.

The Ethical Dilemma of a Rapidly Receding Watering Hole: Implications For Design Education

Keywords:

Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

Ethos, the origin of the word ethics, originally meant a place where animals frequent. When the herds gather at the watering hole how do they interact with other herds, species or competition? How do they behave in a way that they will be welcomed back?

The Politics of Change, Craft and the Bauhaus Reborn: New Relationships in Design Education

Keywords:

Discipline:

Design Education Strategy

South African education systems straddle the developed/developing world schism, an old-school-style Eurocentric view has long tussled with an Africanist dialectic. Educators struggle with access and upliftment issues whilst implementing outcomes-based learning programmes and simultaneously maintaining academic standards. At Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), conscious of the need to build future capacity, innovation in teaching and learning is paramount and the issues identified above are constantly under debate. Experimentation is an ongoing aspect of teaching methodology.

Keywords:

Discipline:

Media & Communications Design

Visual Communications at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), incorporating graphic design and photography, aspires to instil social, environmental and ethical sensitivity within students in order to meet a perceived increase in demand for these issues to be addressed at local and global level. To meet this imperative students are required to produce visual communications solutions for charitable organisations and participate in community-linked photographic excursions that expose them to social and environmental issues within real life scenarios.

Using Educational Research Results To Improve Graphics For Instructional Material

Keywords:

Discipline:

Graphic Design & Visual Art

Graphic designers and illustrators intuitively believe that their graphic embellishments such as pictures, photographs and graphics will aid a learner when they use instructional material. The results of empirical studies however indicate that graphic embellishments have a limited effect and only contribute to learning under very specific conditions.